Lemon Juice
by provocative envy
Summary: IN-PROGRESS: She learns that it's hopelessly rare for someone to be born without an Other, that humans aren't meant to be alone, are unequivocally better when they're grounded and challenged and balanced by their missing halves—soul mates. She hates the words. HG/TR.
1. Yes, No, Maybe So

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**Author's Note**: This is a vaguely magical Soul Mate AU; Hogwarts is mentioned briefly, and Tom is very much still Voldemort, but this is set about a year after his defeat. Canon is canon, with the notable exception that in this world, the name of your soul mate is magically transcribed onto your chest, right above your heart, at midnight on your twentieth birthday. I think most of the pertinent questions about the soul mate stuff are addressed in the story at some point, but if you have questions, feel free to ask.

On an unrelated note, this is so self-indulgent I can't even—_I can't even._

This is **part one of ten**, just FYI, and I will be updating weekly. The plan is for this to come in around 15k words, but it could reach 'War Paint' length fairly easily if I get distracted.

Enjoy!

xoxo

###

**PART ONE**

_Yes, No, Maybe So_

###

_**(no)**_

It is a phenomenon—unexplained and often misunderstood, a bizarre demonstration of the _potential _that exists between two people, nothing more and nothing less—

_Soul mates._

Hermione scoffs at the term.

###

_**(yes)**_

—_but sometimes she wonders how the name of her Other will manifest, pictures looping script and gleaming multicolored ink, a trifecta of cool blue and royal purple and sunshine yellow, neat and gentle and curious as it cocoons itself beneath the surface of her skin like a long-forgotten buried treasure, lost until it was found, ensnared by a veritable minefield of traps and tricks, hidden and treacherous—_

###

_**(no)**_

She learns about Others whose bonds have transcended the limits of time, about impromptu resurrections and millennia swapping—she learns about the gnarled, waxy gashes that scab over the letters when one of them has died prematurely and can no longer return, learns that having handwriting appear gradually, like a fading tattoo, is the most commonly reported Marking. She learns that it's hopelessly rare for someone to be born without an Other, that humans aren't meant to be alone, are unequivocally _better _when they're grounded and challenged and _balanced _by their missing halves—

_Soul mates._

She hates the words.

She hates the expectations—_perfection, compatibility, love_—and she hates the lack of concrete knowledge—_fate and destiny colluding to outwit science_—and she hates that she can't decide for herself, hates that there is some untoward metaphysical _presence _that will dig its claws into her brain and her psyche and unearth the parts of her that she doesn't like, the parts of her that are dark and bleak and _frightening_, yes—

She hates that she will be judged.

She hates that she will be matched.

She hates that she has no control over any of it.

She wants to choose—

She wants to be _chosen._

###

_**(yes)**_

—_and she dreams about flashing eyes, obsidian black and mahogany brown with branching veins of lurid, crimson red, sees angular cheekbones and milk-white skin and broad shoulders, lean muscles bunching and stretching and straining as he picks her up, spinning, spinning, smile blinding, teeth sharp, hand pressed against her heart like a steaming, molten-hot brand—_

###

_**(no)**_

Harry and Ron stay up with her the night of her twentieth birthday.

Ron pours her several shots of firewhiskey, and she doesn't bother reprimanding him; she has always been brave, has lived through a war and kept her chin up, her posture straight, has made sacrifices and scrambled to survive and faced off against unfathomable evil more than once. But this—but _this_—

_Soul mates._

She has fucking _dreaded_ this.

"Six minutes," Harry announces grimly, nudging her half-empty glass towards her side of the butcher-block kitchen island.

"Wonder who it'll be," Ron slurs, tugging at the ends of his hair. "It'd be funny if—if it was someone we knew, wouldn't it?"

She rubs at the uncharacteristically low neckline of her camisole, pushes at her breastbone and fancies she can feel the beginning thrum of a deep-simmering ache, an electric buzz staining the tips of her nerves and positively _singing _with magic—

"Maybe there won't be a name," Harry suggests, idly tracing the pattern of a medium-sized whorl in the wood of the counter.

"Nah," Ron says, flailing his arm in a graceless, overzealous arc. "That's, like, one in a million—You-Know-Who…he was the only recorded case in at least three centuries—"

"Two, actually," she interrupts, knocking back her shot of firewhiskey with a battle-honed grimace. "Two centuries. And for God's _sake_, Ronald, just call him Voldemort. He's _dead_, you know, and he wasn't Marked, so he can't exactly come back."

Ron's cheeks turn pink, freckles stark against the tint of his blush.

"Habit," he mutters, pursing his lips. "It's—habit."

"Two minutes," Harry says, clearing his throat.

She nods shortly, wincing as a mild sting blossoms across her sternum like an irritating, uncomfortable sort of rash—it itches and it rankles and it hurts, too, the way a match does when the flame swims slightly too far down the wick—

But then, abruptly, it intensifies.

It _burns_.

And her muscles are splitting and her capillaries are collapsing and all she knows is the searing throbbing unfamiliar _agony_ of a blade slicing through her chest—_this cannot be right this cannot be right this cannot be right—_and each and every centimeter is a struggle, a gristly scrape of invisible metal and ferocious intent, vicious and violent and _this cannot be right_—

She gasps.

Blood seeps through the gaps between her fingers.

Tears settle at the corners of her eyes, catch on the heavy fringe of her lashes, and the pain—the pain—the pain is _impossible_—

###

_**(yes)**_

—_except she can imagine his voice, warm and rich and syrupy as it coats her senses, sweet and raw like honey, and she can hear her name being uttered in an endless ghost of an echo, otherworldly and soft, again and again and again, and it is music and it is poetry and it is the yawn of a violin and the snap of a guitar string, a breathless murmur and a broken shout—_

###

_**(no)**_

Harry and Ron stare at her Mark for several minutes, unable to speak—their eyes are wide, and the air is fraught with their shock and her fear and she is choking on it, suffocating on her compulsive need to _understand_ what has just happened—

She glances down.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," she whispers—and it is as if she is separating from herself, cell by cell, as if the fabric of her body is unraveling and she is ripping apart at the seams—shredded sinew and concave bones, the ridges of her spinal cord dislodging as her skull implodes—

_This cannot be right._

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," she says again.

The ensuing silence is infinite.

His name is absolute.

###


	2. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**PART TWO**

_Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice_

###

_**(spice)**_

He wakes up in the middle of an empty meadow, budding violet buttercups crushed beneath the weight of his head, flattened velvet petals just barely brushing the tips of his ears, and he registers a peculiar tingling above and around his left ribcage.

He unbuttons his customary white linen shirt with practiced efficiency, baring his pale, unblemished torso to the weakly streaming sunlight.

He frowns.

He rubs at his chest until his thumb is sore and his skin is pink.

There is nothing.

There has always been nothing.

###

_**(sugar)**_

—_and yet he had come to accept that the existence of his Other was an unfortunate inevitability, a smudged charcoal sketch of a prowling, breathing shadow suffused with blistering hints of gold and heartsick shards of burgundy, roaring to life amidst the tattered dregs of his conscience—a girl, yes, all fiercely gorgeous chaos, the shimmering silver mortar that would cement his plans and mask his flaws, patch the holes and correct the fissures—_

###

_**(spice)**_

She knows that there is a standard, Ministry-sanctioned protocol in place for the reintegration of resurrected Others into modern society—bonds must be registered, Marks must be matched, and a preemptive memory charm must be performed.

There are no exceptions.

She stands naked in front of her floor-length bedroom mirror—a century-old antique with a gold-filigree oval frame, the surface foggy with age along the border—and she gingerly touches the leathery outline of her Mark, an innocuous collection of letters whose only irregularity is the horrifying nature of their conception.

She shuts her eyes.

The pervasive copper scent of freshly spilled blood is still imprinted on her nostrils.

Her wand hand twitches.

She knows, now, what it truly means to feel _rage_.

###

_**(sugar)**_

—_but he was plagued by incessant, incomprehensible visions of delicate smiles and devious smirks, plush, pearl-pink lips that would curve and dimple and __**glisten**_ _as they drowned him in the eerie effervescence of the moon, refracting and reflecting and __**igniting**__ like a spark within the confines of a magnifying glass—and he was vulnerable, he was attached, he was captive, he was linked and he was bound and he was __**flammable**__—_

###

_**(spice)**_

He Apparates into Knockturn Alley and is astonished at what he finds—ransacked, abandoned brick buildings with boarded-up windows, rusty nails protruding from the splintered wood, and crumpled newspapers fluttering around his ankles, edges ragged and headlines smeared.

He startles at the sight of a fading graffiti Dark Mark emblazoned across the bottom of a rickety oak door—

A brisk, faintly wet breeze begins to whistle through the cramped and crooked streets, disturbing a hanging copper shop sign, cast-iron scroll brackets squawking at the movement; wobbly, peeling green shutters fly open and sway on their hinges, slamming against rain-swollen windowsills and long-neglected flowerboxes, chipped ceramic pots filled with weeds and decaying stalks of lavender. A lone black crow, large and insidious, shrieks as it circles the sky overhead.

He tucks a hand into his trouser pocket, exhaling impatiently.

He squints into the distance.

His chest is curiously numb.

###

_**(sugar)**_

—_except the rhythm of his heartbeat would often spike unexpectedly, urgent and angry, and he would think, absently, that he could hear a woman's voice call out his name, detached and lilting and __**ethereal**__ as it saturated the wind and the clouds and the crumbling grey cobblestones beneath the soles of his feet, a spectral embrace filtered through a looming haze of drizzled caramel cream and fairy-spun molasses, wholly out of place and only __**just**__ out of reach—_

###

_**(spice)**_

The inconspicuous Ministry barn owl comes at midday.

"I'm defective," she tells it, hands trembling as she unties the letter from its leg. "Something went quite dreadfully wrong during my assembly, I'm afraid."

The owl hoots imperiously in response, plucking an uneaten triangle of whole-wheat toast off her plate with a judgmental click of its beak.

"Did you know that there is a magizoologist in Sweden studying the possibility of _dragons_ actually having Others?" she asks shakily, swirling her fingertip through the condensation gathering along the side of a carafe of grapefruit juice; water drips back down almost immediately, blurring the line she's made. "It's all very fascinating—he's hypothesized that every dragon is born with a single missing scale, out of _thousands_, and that at an arbitrary point in its life, post-adolescence, its missing scale is replaced by the scale of its Other. He's trying to devise a method of magical DNA recognition—"

The owl huffs and swoops through her open garden window, out and off and away.

She swallows.

The bulky Ministry envelope—nondescript and _plain_, her name and address a neat, unassuming scribble across the parchment—is resting on the tabletop.

She wants to _ruin _it.

###

_**(sugar)**_

—_and while he slept he would see, peripherally, tangled strands of long brown hair, glossy and thick and nuanced like melted chocolate, spread out across the emerald satin of his bed sheets, would catch the slender arch of her ankle as her toes curled and her thighs parted and the walls of his mouth were stormed and scaled by a surging volley of different flavors, twining ropes of cinnamon, tangy and frayed, and knotted ribbons of glittering black cherry, bitter and sharp—and there was no harmony to the taste, no, it was not smooth or soft or melodious, no, it was discordant, yes, and it was destructive, yes, and it was __**explosive**__, yes, like an atomic bomb and an unpinned grenade and the sawed-off barrel of a shotgun—_

###

_**(spice)**_

She waits in a bland, sparsely decorated lobby in the bowels of the Ministry. She is wearing a crew-neck navy sweater, cotton sleeves pulled down past her wrists, and a pair of loose-fitting grey trousers. A sage green headband cradles her scalp. It is far too tight.

"Hermione Jean Granger?" the disembodied, carefully modulated voice of an Unspeakable calls out from behind the double doors.

"Yes," Hermione answers, a cool layer of sweat pooling in the divot of her clavicle.

"We have determined that your Other—one Tom Marvolo Riddle—was remanded into our custody at approximately eleven-fifteen this morning," the voice says. "His Mark has been confirmed, and he is currently undergoing a Ministry-approved memory cleanse along with the requisite social quarantine. We estimate that he will be released into the Meeting Chamber in—"

"What? What do you mean'_his Mark has been confirmed'_?" Hermione demands, biting back a flinch at the implication of the question.

"According to the International Statute on Soul Bonds, section nineteen, article—"

"Article four, yes, I know—all Marks must be confirmed by impartial Ministry personnel and monitored for atypical transposition and signs of illegal tampering," she interrupts, furiously clenching and unclenching her fists. "But that wasn't—you're saying, then, that there was a Mark? On Vold—on _Tom Marvolo Riddle_? My name was on his chest?"

There is a brief pause.

"Our records indicate that his Mark has been confirmed," the voice says again.

Her stomach lurches and her tonsils fuse and she thinks of Harry's blank gaze and Ron's forced grin and the pile of dead bodies she'd had to walk past at Hogwarts the night of Voldemort's defeat, _nameless expressionless boneless_ corpses who could not cry or scream or _bleed_—

The skin around her Mark prickles with awareness.

She is _sick_ with it.

###

_**(sugar)**_

—_and he believed, emphatically, that romantic love was an abomination, a venomous, incurable cancer meant to be extracted and excised and __**expunged**__, meant to be deleted and deflated and drained dry like the caked-mud bottom of a riverbed—because he wanted to dissect the inner-workings and the mechanics and the whirring centrifugal motions of it, wanted to be able to draw a diagram and rewrite the formula and isolate the variable that had turned his mother and his father and their wasted, futile bond into the stuff of nightmares, into the monsters that lurked in his closet, skeletal and hellish and petrifying, phantom giants with slavering fangs and daggered talons and untamed riotous manes of fur frizzy with secrets and scandals, lies and betrayals—_

###

_**(spice)**_

The Meeting Chamber is a sterile, all white room; there is no furniture, just slick Carrera marble floors and a small, pristinely painted door with an intricate platinum handle.

Wards have been cast to prevent the use of magic.

A microscopic, whirring brass video camera hovers near the ceiling, laser-red light aimed directly at her forehead—immortalizing every tic and jolt and spasm—and she feels like the target of a particularly advanced sniper rifle.

Suddenly, the lock on the door clicks open.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," an Unspeakable announces in a dull monotone, stepping aside for Voldemort—Riddle—her fucking _Other_—

She blinks rapidly, grits her teeth and steels her jaw—

But she can already sense the change in her system, like a foaming fuming tidal wave crashing into her knees and knocking her off-balance—some intangible, untapped fragment of herself knitting back together as he moves closer and closer and the threads of his soul soar and mingle and weave around hers—

"Hermione Jean Granger," she hears him drawl, as if from very far away. He sounds amused.

Her lips part.

Her world narrows.

The Mark on her chest starts to _flutter_—

And she yearns.

She _needs._

She is helpless.

###


	3. The Lion and the Unicorn

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**PART THREE**

_The Lion and the Unicorn, Fighting for the Crown_

###

_**(lion)**_

—_and he sees her, feels her, scans the sandy brown freckles spattered across the bridge of her nose and the mottled pink undertones of her plump lower lip, creased and wrinkled and dry—and the sour crippling burn of citrus and acid leaks through the pores of his skin, erupts like a geyser, corrodes the topmost dermal layer and bleeds and bleeds and __**bleeds**__ into the Mark on his chest, invisible and flawlessly executed, curlicue flourishes and perfectly straight lines—and he is stunned and he is appalled and he did not want this, he did not ask for it, he was a soldier and he was a leader and he did not __**want **__this, he knows he knows he knows but he does not remember anything he does not remember where or when or __**why**__—_

###

_**(unicorn)**_

He unnerves her.

He can see it in the tense set of her shoulders and the rigid line of her jaw, can feel the hesitant pulse of his Mark as it strains towards hers, waning and weary—she keeps her wand in her front pocket, always within reach, always within sight, and sneers with obvious disdain at the hapless Ministry employee instructed to take their official bond photograph. She maintains a studiously meticulous distance of twelve inches between their bodies at all times, ducks away from his arms and his smiles and his stilted attempts at conversation as she leads him to the underground car park—

"You're a muggle-born," he notes on the drive back to her townhouse; there are a number of flat, flashing electronics littering the dashboard, encased in matte black plastic with polished chrome and mahogany accents. He is unfamiliar with them. He is frustrated. He is _trying, _and she is not.

He looks up.

She is squeezing the steering wheel, knuckles protruding sharp and white against the thin skin of her hands.

"What a positively _keen_ observation," she grits out, the delicate point of her chin quivering with anxiety. "And do you know what _you_ are, Tom? Or did they take that memory, too?"

He pauses, studying the planes of her face with a long, sweeping, _calculating_ glance—she is scowling at her speedometer, engine purring loudly in the foreground as she pushes down on the gas pedal.

"The resurrection phase is fascinating, isn't it?" he asks nonchalantly, drumming his fingers against his thigh. "Although you strike me as a bit of a Skeptic—and what's the term you lot like to use? _Reformation_?"

Her posture stiffens.

"How do you even know that?" she retorts. "You're supposed to be a blank slate—separate entity from the original and all that. Can't have you remembering what it was like to _die_, can we?"

She shifts the car into a higher gear with an abrupt flick of her wrist; there is a faint, jarring jolt, and the motor whines piteously.

His seatbelt is uncomfortably snug.

###

_**(lion)**_

—_and he is Tom Marvolo Riddle, can tell by the way his name is carved into the space above her breasts with almost clinical precision, letters small and spacing even—and he is twenty-four years old, he is a wizard, he ate a bowl of steel-cut oats with vanilla-laced honey for breakfast that morning and cannot recall anything else, no, can only catalogue the darkened crevasses and bottomless pits of his brain, a blurry pastel landscape of granite cliffs and fatal freefalls and bramble-bush ravines, sinking swamps glued together with mud and ash and sin, deep frozen valleys flooded with the lingering fog of clashing swords and an eternal quest for power—_

###

_**(unicorn)**_

She is given a leave of absence from work—three months and twelve days, the bare minimum suggested by the Ministry psychologists.

_It is of paramount importance to solidify your connection to your Other during the earliest, most crucial stages of your bond, _she reads off of one of the informational pamphlets she'd been given in the Meeting Chamber. _The consequences of undue bodily distance during this time can result in highly unpleasant side-effects; headaches, nausea, and extreme fatigue have been reported._

She opens her front door, mired in a dampening haze of dread, and directs Tom to a guest room—the bed is unmade, quilted pillows strewn haphazardly across the mattress, but there is a stack of freshly laundered flannel sheets in the linen closet. She does not want to touch them. She does not want to touch _him_.

_Your bond will eventually settle on its own. Until it does, it is normal to share emotions as well as general physical sensations with your Other; lust, fear, joy, anger, and pain are the most prominent expressions, although it is not uncommon in stronger bonds for particularly sensitive receptors to materialize._

She sifts through a neatly organized drawer in her kitchen for the brown leather binder that's stuffed with take-out menus. She should be hungry by now. She isn't. Her stomach is an iron-crushed compact ball of weighted lead and nagging irritation.

She wonders, though, about when Tom has last eaten, how many minutes or hours or days have passed since he's had a proper meal, and she feels an immediate, instinctive frisson of concern, finds herself holding a head of butter lettuce and a wedge of Stilton bleu before she starts to move towards the knife block—

_Caring for your Other will be an innate, intuitive response to the manifestation of your bond_, she recites inwardly. _You will often understand the unspoken nuances of your Other's needs and wants before even they do; this understanding is centralized around practical considerations such as hunger and tiredness, but can also extend to more ephemeral, less tangible desires like loneliness, boredom, and a lack of sexual gratification._

She picks at the edge of the barcode sticker hanging from the stem of a tomato.

Footsteps sound from the stairs.

The muscles in her abdomen relax, ligaments loosening and tendons unfurling, soft and warm and pliable—

"Hermione?" he calls out, entering the kitchen. "Where are—oh, splendid, are you making dinner? I was just about to ask if you'd like to eat. I'm starving."

She grips the contoured wood handle of her paring knife.

"Yeah," she manages to murmur. "I know."

###

_**(lion)**_

—_but her heart is strumming a lilting, unfamiliar half-beat, skipping and jumping like a broken metronome, and she is a cyclone and a tempest and a hurricane, a force of nature rife with wild spindrifts and slamming torrents of fire and rain and ice—and she is furious, she is confused, she is terrified and she is __**cunning**__ and she cannot be certain where it is that she ends and he begins and she wants to flee and she wants to sleep and she wants to drive the tapered steel blade of her knife into the tender meat of his gut and she wants to __**rip**__—_

###

_**(unicorn)**_

She orders enough Thai food for ten people—sautéed chicken swimming in lemongrass and black garlic, coconut milk curry peppered with basil leaves and peanut oil, fried strips of tofu served over cabbage and onion and a red-purple chili plum sauce—

She waits for it to arrive.

She hides.

She empties the dishwasher.

She wastes ten minutes polishing crystal-cut goblets.

She imagines Voldemort sitting at her dining room table, dabbing the scarlet clutch of his lips with a snow-white linen napkin, imagines tea for two and the daunting presence of an extra toothbrush on her bathroom counter—

"Do you use magic for _anything_?" Tom asks, sidling up to her as she fumbles with a corkscrew and a slender bottle of chilled German Riesling. "The great majority of your possessions don't have so much as a _trace_ of magical residue—you haven't modified them in the slightest."

She thinks about the aftermath of the final battle, thinks about how enormous the world had felt and how uncomplicated her parents' muggle life had seemed—

"I grew up without magic," she replies, pouring the Riesling into a glass. She overfills it, pale gold liquid sloshing against the rim. "The adjustment—it was easier for me like this."

He leans against the counter, tall and graceful, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.

"So—you _are _a Skeptic."

"I'm not," she says, lungs seizing on a gulp of cold white wine. She coughs. She is _dizzy_. "I'm…my parents were muggles. They didn't have magic. They didn't have the _capacity _for identifying the existence of their Others—they just…they dated, and they fell in love, and they got married. They had me. There wasn't—there wasn't some antiquated, ridiculous _soul bond _forcing them together—they weren't mystically, psychosomatically connected to a—a _stranger_ on their twentieth birthdays. God. They had the same values and ideals and ambitions and it _worked_. They were _happy_."

He hums, thoughtful and intent.

And she remembers going to Australia to retrieve her parents, remembers the aching realization that she could not fix them, she could not bring them back, no, she was alone and she was an orphan and she could not even regret it, no, they were her sacrifice and her loss and she had kept them safe and they were happy and she—she would be _fine_—

"And is that why you resent me with such…vehemence?" he drawls, smirk crooked and eyes narrowed.

She drains her wine glass.

"No," she says tersely. "I _resent _you because you aren't just a _stranger_ who I'm mystically, psychosomatically connected to."

He raises an eyebrow; his expression is placid, friendly, _casual_, but there is a palpable air of impatience surrounding him, a thrill of doubt and a spark of deliberation—he is testing her. He is _hunting _for something.

"Oh?" he prompts. "Then what am I?"

She knows that it is illegal to meddle with the parameters of the Ministry's memory charms; she knows that the specificity of the details he is allowed to learn about himself and his past are limited to the facts and figures available from objective, third-party sources—government censuses and Hogwarts transcripts, birth certificates and wand registries. She knows, too, that Tom Marvolo Riddle was never publicly linked to Voldemort, not even during the war—

The doorbell rings.

She meets his gaze, quiet and guarded and _searching_.

"Dinner's here," she says, voice steady.

###

_**(lion)**_

—_and he cannot trust her, his Other, cannot discount the vicious, bitter slant that twists her smile from pretty to petulant, cannot ignore the shadows that skulk menacingly in the irises of her eyes, kaleidoscope fragments in sweltering shades of caustic and cautious—_

###


	4. When Adam Delved and Eve Span

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**PART FOUR**

_When Adam Delved and Eve Span, Who Was Then a Gentleman?_

###

_**(Adam)**_

A week passes.

He makes her breakfast twice—a slice of too-thick cinnamon-raisin toast with poached eggs in vinegar, yolks runny and whites ragged, splattered across her plate like a Rorschach test. She takes him to the cinema to see _The Blair Witch Project_ on opening night; she wears a teal cashmere scarf, drapes it loosely around her neck so that it covers her Mark, and he uses wandless, nonverbal magic four times before the credits roll.

It feels like purgatory.

###

_**(Eve)**_

—_and she sleeps badly, uncomfortably, builds herself an impenetrable fairytale fortress of goose-down pillows and camouflage quilts and breakneck nostalgia, heats up a ceramic ivory mug of two-percent milk and tries her best to drown in it, reads _Tristan and Iseult _with her pajama sleeves tugged down and their fabled fatal tragedy ghosting across her lips, the loneliness of her childhood on a stymied stagnant repeat with her family still intact and her Other still unknown, a lullaby world where love and fate and loss were all the same, a blurry shapeless mass of clouds swollen with lightning and thunder, elemental, __**inescapable**__—_

###

_**(Adam)**_

He is exiting the upstairs bathroom, has a large, sky-blue towel wrapped around his waist, skin damp and hair dripping wet—

He catches her staring.

She's hovering outside of her bedroom, knuckles a stark, shocking white against the polished brass of her doorknob. Her gaze is intent, her expression unhappy, and he feels a barrage of unfamiliar sensations flood his chest, swarm the empty cavity inside like the frothing crest of a river rapid—and there is _rage_, bleak and black and sour, and there is sadness, overripe and soft, rotten to the core, and there is _regret_ and there is _yearning_ and there are phantom tendrils of pain and startling flashes of triumph, a confounding cacophony of vitriol and violence, orchestral fury and weakening sorrow—

It occurs to him that this is what it means to have an Other, that she is _his_, every bit of her, raw and bare and incapable of pretense—

Abruptly, he tightens his hold on his towel.

He resents that conclusion, and, like so much else, he cannot remember _why_.

"There isn't a Mark," she finally says, voice oddly harsh in the dim silence of the hallway. "The Ministry—they said they'd checked."

Nonplussed, he glances down.

"They did," he replies, clearing his throat. "They said my Mark manifested in invisible ink. They called you—tricky. Clever. _Rare_."

She steps forward, gingerly, eyes locked on his chest.

"Invisible ink," she repeats. "That's—inconvenient."

He notices that she's wearing a thin, scoop-necked red t-shirt, the Mark above the swell of her breasts finally clear to him—and he sees his name, sees puffy pink scar tissue, deeply scored and _perfectly _traced—

Something like satisfaction wells in the pit of his stomach.

"They also said I never registered with an Other in my previous life," he continues, abstractly curious about how she might react. "That there aren't many documented cases of it happening, but that _beyond_ the above average strength of an extra-temporal bond—what we have—it seems that we also are likely to have unprecedented levels of compatibility."

She reaches out, fingertips trembling, but she stops herself before she touches the spot where she thinks his Mark should be.

"How so?" she whispers, and he wants to know if she feels it, feels the tinted red static humming between their bodies, slinking through the air, all bouncing atoms and incinerated molecules, like roasting popcorn kernels and bursting balloons and a steady current of dormant electricity—

He licks his lips. She mirrors the motion. He wonders what she tastes like.

"You weren't born until 1979," he says, distantly aware that he's taunting her. "They think that my soul—it was waiting for yours. No one else would have ever been good enough."

She freezes.

###

_**(Eve)**_

—_because he __**likes**__ it, likes the permanence of his name gouged into her chest, likes that he had to tear her open to make a space for himself, likes that he isn't just on the surface, no, he's melted into the marrow of her bones and he's infused into the syrup of her blood and he's __**saturated**__ in the tributary tree-root blossom of her circulatory system, is coursing through her veins like a virus, and he likes that his Mark on her skin is invincible, that he is the only part of her that will outlive time and outrun history and he __**likes**__ that, likes that through her, through their bond, that __**he**__ will last forever and __**they**__ will never die, no, likes that she will never __**leave**__, no, will never be able to, not properly—_

###

_**(Adam)**_

The doorbell rings at eight in the morning on the second Saturday of October.

It's Harry.

"I wasn't sure…I didn't want to intrude," he says, hunching over his tea at her breakfast table. Steam is fogging up the lenses of his glasses. "I know…with the new bond…but you weren't answering your phone, and Ron and I—"

"Were concerned for my wellbeing?" she asks dryly. "Yes, I can understand that. I've got a memory-impaired Tom Riddle living in my spare room, Harry—I'm worried, too."

He tenses, nervously ruffling the top of his hair.

"Where—where's he at, anyway?"

"Tom? He's sleeping. Does a lot of that, actually—it's a bit surprising," she says, stirring her tea with careful, measured movements.

Harry picks at the corner of a cranberry scone, pastry crumbling onto a rectangular serving dish.

"That's…" he trails off, uncertain, and stares outside—rain is hitting the crosshatched windowpane in spackled platinum drops, streaming down to puddle in the aluminum divots of the exposed ledge.

"That isn't what you wanted to know," she finishes for him, tapping her spoon against the rim of her cup, rhythmic and methodical. "Is it?"

He shifts restlessly in his seat, toying with the collar of his jumper.

"I—no," he replies, looking at her, eyes wary. She grits her teeth. He visibly steels himself, sitting up straight. "You called him 'Tom'."

She goes still.

"That's his name," she says, voice cracking.

Harry is quiet for a moment, plucking a single dried cranberry out of the remains of the scone on his plate.

"What's he like?" he asks suddenly, changing the subject. "I know he doesn't remember who he is, or what he did, or what he _tried _to do, but—"

"That's not fair," she interrupts. "No one who's resurrected _ever _finds out who they were before, Harry, you know that. It's why Pensieves are illegal."

"Yeah, and you really think _reincarnated Voldemort _is going to play by the rules? Really? You think he's going to be satisfied with a—with a blank mental slate and a boring bloody life in the suburbs? He's your _Other_, Hermione, and _you _would never be satisfied with that—"

"I didn't _say_ that he would be," she says hotly.

"—already knows he's _special_, thanks to the Ministry and their ridiculous—_commentary_ on his lack of a prior bond—"

She cuts him off.

"How do you know about that?" she demands, spoon falling into her cup with a delicate porcelain clink and a splatter of tea—the liquid spreads, staining her tablecloth a pale, lukewarm sepia. "Harry? How do you—how do you know what the Ministry told him about his past?"

He bows his head.

"Er—Ron had his dad…look into it," he says with a grimace. "We were just—we wanted to be sure. That there hadn't been a mistake. That he was really…"

She blinks—

And then her heart, she thinks dimly—her heart just…_shatters_.

"You—" she starts, stops, _breaks_. "You don't trust me. You don't—you don't _trust me_. Me. You think I'm—what, _tainted_ now? Different? Somehow fundamentally _changed _by three weeks alone with Tom Riddle?"

"_Voldemort_," he corrects sharply. "His name—he's _Voldemort_, Hermione, not—not _Tom Riddle_. You don't even realize it, do you? You're humanizing him—"

"Because he's a _human_!" she hisses, explosive and indignant and _hurt_, defensive, numb and hollow and lost and—

Thoughtful?

"He's awake," she announces coolly, chair screeching against the bamboo floors as she pushes it back, stands up on wobbly legs, collects the dirty plates and dumps them on the kitchen counter. "Unless you're staying for an introduction, you're welcome to leave."

He swallows, nods once, doesn't bother responding—

His expression is troubled.

She turns on the hot water at the sink with a flick of the nickel-plated handle, squeezes an ounce of floral-scented dish soap into the basin.

She hears the front door slam shut.

She flinches.

###

_**(Eve)**_

—_and he needles at her conscience, pricks and pulls like the flimsy fish hook clasp of a cheap silver necklace, rusting against the nape of her neck in powder-puff streaks of poison-frog green shot through with the waxy, waning orange of a persimmon skin, and she positively __**aches**__ with the urge to scrub and scour and wash him down the drain, yes—_

###

_**(Adam)**_

He follows her to the park on a muddy grey afternoon, watches her run a brisk, three-mile loop through the dense, barren-brown trees—it only takes her twenty minutes, and her cheeks are pink from exertion by the time they re-enter the townhouse.

"You're—thirsty, right?" she calls out, awkwardly dabbing at the sweat beading across her hairline as she hesitates by the refrigerator.

He sits on one end of her leather sofa, propping his feet against the side of the burgundy steam-trunk she uses as a coffee table.

"Sure," he replies, studying the framed pictures hanging above the mantle of the fireplace—Hermione, beaming, with her arms around two boys, one with black hair and one with red; Hermione with an attractive, middle-aged couple, holding ski poles and laughing in front of a charming wooden sign written entirely in German; Hermione in a sleek periwinkle dress, smiling shyly and clutching the hand of a boy with rather _severe_ eyebrows—

She returns to the living room with two tall glasses and a pitcher of lemonade.

"Thanks," he says, rubbing his thumb over the rounded edge of a corkboard coaster.

Her mouth pinches in a frown.

"So, I was considering making a trip up to Scotland for Samhain next weekend—"

He glances at the mantle.

He recognizes the dark-haired boy in the first photograph.

He takes a sip of lemonade.

"Hermione," he interjects, harmless and slow, "I've been meaning to ask you something."

She raises an eyebrow, looking suspicious.

"Oh?"

He smirks, setting his glass on the center of his coaster, a perfect ring of moisture forming underneath it.

"Yeah," he shrugs, leaning forward.

He pauses.

He lets the silence stretch, savors the tension bleeding into the atmosphere, tart and sweet—

"Who is Voldemort?"

###

**Author's Note**: Hermione is going to crack soon—can you tell?

The next installment will be a bit longer, so expect an update in another 7-10 days.

xoxo

###


	5. Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**PART FIVE**

_Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill_

###

_**(Jack)**_

—_and he watches her face turn ashen and her chin begin to quiver and he feels her panic __**roar**__ through his bloodstream, loud and jarring and hot, because she is a lion, dazzling and brutal, and he is a snake, poisonous and sinuous and velvet smooth, and her emotions are crystal __**sharp**__, like a snapping strapping jaw and a razor row of jagged ivory teeth, tearing at his flesh like they have any hope of piercing his armor, excising his weak points, and it's as if she's always growling and posturing and __**gnawing**__ at his bones, fatal and futile—_

###

_**(Jill)**_

She knows that she doesn't have to answer him.

She knows the laws, knows the risks, knows that information is a deceptively dangerous commodity and that he has no tangible _leverage_ over her, over the situation, not really.

She knows, too, that he already knows who Voldemort is.

And her life is at a standstill. She is stuck. She is paused. She can't move forward and she can't move backward and she can't move _on. _Their bond is permanent and grating and eerily, effusively strong. She is not his victim, and he is not her enemy, and this is not a problem that she can fix.

No.

_No._

Her Other is Tom Marvolo Riddle, and she cannot keep ignoring that fact. Her soul is inextricably entwined with his, there has never and will never be another person who matches her so well—and she is tired, so tired, exhausted from the anger and the indecision and the self-doubt, because she can't sleep and she can't hide and she can't stop cataloguing all of the ways that their bond is _wrong_, can't stop thinking about who she is and who he is and what it means that there is a secret, not insignificant part of her that must not be _bothered _by what he is capable of—

It is inconceivable.

It is everything that she never asked for.

His question ricochets around her skull.

The lemonade she's drinking is sticky and tart as it coats her tongue.

###

_**(Jack)**_

—_because he can slither around her flaws and her fears and he can bide his time, wait in the tall gold savannah grass, sunlight bouncing off the gleaming obsidian leather of his scales, and he can __**study**__ her, gauge the spread of her claws and the strength of her bite, coil himself under the shadow of a rock as she paces and pounces and pouts at her near-misses, the buzzing flare of her hindbrain so plainly attempting to warn her that there is another predator, another hunter, that she is not safe and she is not __**alone**__, no, will never be alone again—_

###

_**(Jill)**_

It happens abruptly.

She puts her glass down.

He arches a vaguely amused eyebrow.

And she—

She is _sick _of the stalemate.

She is _sick_ of the tension.

She is _sick_ of the constant pain behind her breastbone, of the mechanical tick-tock sway of his emotions filtering through the Mark that's embedded in her skin.

She is sick of _it_, of him, and—

"I want to kill you," she says, teeth clenched and lips parted—and it is so much more than a confession, so much more than a threat, and she wonders if he knows that, wonders if he understands what she's doing and saying and sacrificing with this admission—because he is her _Other_, he is her soul mate, and she cannot run and she cannot lie and she wants him gone gone _gone_ wants to break him and bury him and forget that she is his and he is _hers_ and that they fit together seamlessly, perfectly, and she hates it she hates it she hates _him_ and it is _stupid _to wonder if he understands, so fucking stupid, because yes, yes, of course he does, he will always understand her and she will always understand _him_ and that is worse—that is _terrifying_—

She cannot run.

She cannot lie.

"I want to _kill_ you," she says again, and her voice is stronger, clearer, and his expression, she thinks in a quick, dizzy daze—his expression is so uncharacteristically _open_—

Because he is staring at her, eyes roving across the planes of her face as if he has never seen her before, not until now, not truly, and his mouth is slightly open, jaw relaxed and cheekbones prominent—he is hers, he is beautiful, he is _hers_, and his gaze is intent, fascinated, curious and deadly and flickering with a spice-rimmed spark of heat—

He leans forward, across the sofa, catching her chin in his hand.

She stills.

He smiles, and it's odd and fierce and _quiet_.

She feels his excitement reverberate through her chest—it echoes, rumbles, melds into the tender cobwebbed fabric of her muscles and just _sticks_.

"You should try," he murmurs, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the dry, chapped cushion of her lower lip. "You should try to kill me, Hermione."

Her tongue darts out, brushing against his fingertip.

She tastes salt and soap and something earthy, murky, dark and rich—

His breath hitches.

###

_**(Jack)**_

—_and he shivers, feels the savage, satisfying curdle of his lungs as they contract around nothing, __**nothing**__, an ironclad burst of oxygen lurking in the straining sinuous cranberry-red cavity of his throat as he thinks that she is fucking __**lovely **__in her honesty, her loathing, her desperation, a delicate porcelain doll with a rabbit-fast heartbeat and a steel-soldered set of nerves, yes, because she is not nothing, __**nothing**__, and he is sure now, he is __**sure**__, that she is not a mistake, she is not a blight or a burden or a blister to scratch at, no, and he wants to own her, he wants to collect her, he wants her to put a knife to his heart and he wants her to __**push**__ and she would not win, no, and he would not die, no, but he wants to kiss her and he wants to fuck her and he wants to see his blood smeared across the scabbed-over grooves of the Mark on her chest as she submits and he __**devours**__—_

###

_**(Jill)**_

The air is thick with expectation.

She hesitates.

He sidles closer.

The leather of the couch creaks.

"You think I can't kill you?" she asks, and the movement of her mouth causes her lips to catch on his skin, his thumbnail scraping along the ridge of her teeth as his finger lands flush against her soft palate.

He presses up.

Reflexively, she chokes.

His pupils dilate.

Her stomach tightens.

###

_**(Jack)**_

—_but __**oh**__, her eyes are a fantasy all their own, a burning smoky quartz with fractured facets of chocolate topaz and petrified amber and milky espresso tourmaline, irises shot through with bolts of spring green peridot and craggy sea foam agate, polished jade and glimmering emerald, citrine and fire opal and rare yellow sapphire, and she doesn't blink and she doesn't look down and he is mesmerized by the fan of her lashes, long and black and feathered, and he wants to know which bit of him is meant to fit with this bit of her, wants to know if she's as enthralled by the stone smooth line of his jaw as he is by the faint cluster of freckles drizzled across the bridge of her nose—_

###

_**(Jill)**_

His head dips towards hers.

He nudges the slope of her cheek.

"I think," he says, tone silky, "that we both know what will happen when you try."

She reaches up, running the back of her hand along the side of his neck, right above his carotid artery.

His pulse jumps.

She squeezes her thighs together.

His teeth graze her skin as he drags his mouth down.

###

_**(Jack)**_

—_and it is exhilarating and it is enchanting and it is __**hypnotizing**__, yes, and even as he relishes the melting melodious sting of his fangs sinking into her body, the inexorable defeat of a lion by a serpent, even as he allows himself a brief, titillating moment to savor his triumph, his victory, his ambush, he has the fleeting, traitorous thought that he has not won anything, no, because she is __**his**__, his tattered soul's missing half, his __**equal**__ by any quantifiable estimation, and his venom may shriek a shrill, otherworldly path through her veins, a toxic tangle of paralytic thorns and lethal bramble bush tumbleweeds, but she is his, his, __**his**__, and she will, he realizes, be __**immune**__—_

###

_**(Jill)**_

Their breath mingles, intertwines, and the sour sweet scent of lemonade is pervasive.

His thumb, slick with her saliva, traces a slow, agonizing circle around the hollow at the base of her throat.

"Oh?" she says, unwavering. "And what's that?"

Their lips are touching.

It isn't a kiss.

"You'd feel it," he replies, and his voice is low and aggravating and deep and it is a _promise_, it is a challenge, it is a _mess_, and she—

She shudders.

His other hand molds to the curve of her waist.

She feels his palm straight through the fabric of her shirt.

"Yeah?" she asks. "What would I feel?"

He pushes forward slightly.

She meets him halfway.

"You'd feel…" he whispers. He stops. She _aches_. "You'd feel everything."

She swallows the words.

Her eyelids flutter shut.

His tongue is scorching against hers as he licks his lips.

###


	6. Up Above the World So High

**Lemon Juice**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**PART SIX**

_Up Above the World So High, Like a Diamond in the Sky_

###

_**(high)**_

He is suspended—he is _in suspense_—he is afloat and adrift and askew—

He is close enough to count her lashes if he needs to, close enough to feel how her heartbeat is trying to twine and twist with his; and he wonders, theoretically, _abstractly_, if he could even make a horcrux while in possession of an Other—he wonders what would happen to her, what it might feel like to split his soul in half now that it is finally, finally, _finally _complete—he wonders why he was so set on immortality before, what it is about their bond that is so special, so unique, that it circumvented an entire lifetime of sin and savagery—he wonders if she is a virgin, if she waited, if she will allow him to wrap his hands around her throat while he fucks her, let him squeeze, _squeeze_, flirt with that blurry, blissful line of too much, too hard, not enough oxygen and not enough friction—he wonders if he will ever know himself, know Voldemort, as well as he will eventually know her.

And he has a choice to make.

She has already made hers.

###

_**(sky)**_

—_and she is a blank space, an empty page, a vast velvet firmament of flat black or white or grey, colorless, dimensionless, __**starless**__, and she has no shape and she has no end and she is waiting, she is waiting, she is waiting for him to touch her, to mold her, to curl his fingers around the anti-matter edges of her body and push in, press forward, smoothing down and stretching out, because she is waiting, she is __**waiting**__, she is waiting to be reborn, to be __**remade**__—_

###

_**(high)**_

Her hair is piled on top of her head in some kind of messy, complicated looking knot—golden brown strands are escaping the neon yellow elastic holding it all together, curling, sweaty tendrils sticking to her neck, and her bangs are swept to the side, clipped back by a navy plastic barrette.

She is still wearing her running clothes—a tissue-thin, loose-fitting pink tank top and a pair of black mesh shorts that cut off at mid-thigh.

She has a faint silver scar above her left knee, a warped, uneven line that's only about an inch long. It's barely visible and seems rather old.

He wants to fucking _erase_ it.

No, no, no—

He wants to _replace it_ with a mark of his own.

He closes his eyes.

###

_**(sky)**_

—_because there is a looming granite precipice and a million mile drop to the bottom, to the fall, to infinity, and the air is frosty and the weather is sharp and she will slip, she will stumble, she will __**scream**__, but the rain stings as it pricks at her bare arms and there is ice and hail and snow and it is like a deluge of thumbtacks and sewing needles and paper cuts and she feels droplets of blood bubble and froth, gleaming crimson swirls against the pale cold cream of her skin, and she should jump, she should escape, she should build a bridge or scale a cliff or find shelter from the storm—but she doesn't—she __**doesn't**__—_

###

_**(high)**_

He drags his hand down the flat of her abdomen.

"Tell me what it's like," he hears himself say—and his lips flutter against hers as he speaks, a taunting facsimile of a kiss, and her breathing falters, turns ragged—"Tell me what it's like for you."

He dips two fingertips beneath the waistband of her shorts. He grazes the hollow of her pelvis, scrapes his nails across the lace front of her knickers, has to hold himself very, very still when he registers the faint, instinctive rocking of her hips.

"What?" she asks, and the shape of her mouth shifts against his, the lush cushion of her lower lip pushing out, turning softer, more relaxed, and he almost breaks, almost, even as he thinks that this is it, yes, this is the moment when his control will snap and his restraint will crumble and there is, ultimately, so little he can do to stop it, stop _himself_—

He grits his teeth.

"I feel you—all the time," he manages to pant. He slowly pushes his hand inside of her shorts, but he doesn't touch her. Not properly. Not yet. "I feel you in the shower, can practically _taste _the soap you use, that ridiculous fucking _Tahitian vanilla bath gel_—and I feel you when you can't sleep, when you're lying in your bed and rolling back and forth and fucking—_thinking _about me, you're always fucking thinking about me, and I feel you when you're angry, and I feel you when you're sad, and I feel you when you're naked, and, and _wet_, and _lonely_, and it's—it's _driving me mad_, isn't it?"

She freezes.

"You…" she trails off, sounding lost. "You can feel…"

He possessively curves his fingers over the mound of her cunt, nudging the heel of his palm into her clit; she begins to tremble, and he begins to understand.

"_Tell me_," he says again, and it isn't a question. "Tell me what it's like for you."

She hesitates.

###

_**(sky)**_

—_and she remembers taking astronomy in school, remembers learning about constellations, black holes, planetary orbits and gravitational pulls and lunar eclipses; she remembers the monumental asymmetry of the night sky, the way it could disguise itself and guard its secrets, remembers her awe at the indescribable interconnectivity of the stars and the sun and the moon, unfathomable amounts of energy being generated and shared and propelled back and forth, over and over, strong enough to change the tides and alter her perception of light and sound and time—_

###

_**(high)**_

He uses his middle finger to stroke feather-light circles around the entrance to her cunt. She's soaked through her knickers, and the cotton is tacky against the back of his hand.

"I try to ignore you," she says, lifting her shirt over her head, tossing it to the side. Her bra is plain beige satin—it's innocent, and he wants to ruin it. He wants to _shred _it. "I try to—to pretend you aren't there."

His cock is pressing against the zipper of his trousers; he can't remember ever being this hard before, this desperate. He thinks about shoving her to her knees, thinks about her tongue around his foreskin, thinks about fucking her throat until she cries—he thinks about spreading her legs, thinks about tasting how wet she is, thinks about rolling her clit between his teeth. He thinks about savoring her screams, collecting them like trophies. He thinks about making the lurid pink flush that's currently staining her cheeks fucking permanent_._

"You can't, though, can you? You can't ignore me," he replies, bemused by the tangle of emotions piercing through the layers of his Mark—he can feel her apprehension, her excitement, can feel the teasing scrape of his own thumbnail as it ghosts over the nub of her clit. He's astonished. He's alarmed. He's captivated by the strange, vibrato resonance of everything he can feel, the unexpected lurches of her pulse, the intense shockwaves of pleasure punching through his senses when he finally plunges two of his fingers into the tight clutch of her cunt—

"It's like my mind is looking in a mirror," she whispers, breasts heaving, back arched. His mouth goes dry. "Except the mirror is—wrong. Warped. Broken."

Abruptly, he needs her naked.

He flicks his unoccupied hand.

He conjures a knife.

Her eyes widen—and then he has to shudder. He registers, so sharply, his own arousal amplified, magnified, reeling through a feedback loop of shared perception as he brings the flat of the blade to the straps of her bra.

"There won't be anything left when I'm done," he tells her, hardly recognizing his own voice; he sounds tender, gentle, and he is meticulous with the point of the jagged, serrated edge as he slices through her clothing.

But she surprises him.

She reaches out, wrapping her own hand around the carved ivory handle of the knife. She places the tip against the soft part of her abdomen, right below her navel. She pushes down, ever so slightly, and he watches, entranced, as a microscopic bead of blood shivers to the surface of her skin.

His cock throbs.

"You said that I'd feel everything," she reminds him.

And he—

He is undone.

He surges forward.

He kisses her, and she tastes like insanity.

He is _undone._

###

_**(sky)**_

—_and she has known, since she was eleven years old, that magic can do extraordinary things, she has, she has witnessed a sheet of shattered glass become whole again with nothing more than a casual twirl of her wand, has watched as rampant, raging forest fires were turned to ash in the space of a few short moments—but this—__**Tom**__—she cannot fathom what he is to her, what they are to each other, not anymore, and it isn't magic, it isn't extraordinary, it's madness and it's chaos and she is unraveled, she is unpinned, she is unfixable, and she thinks, yes, that perhaps she always has been, yes, that perhaps that is the __**point **__and she has been missing it all along— _

###

_**(high)**_

No.

It isn't insanity, he realizes with a jolt of something that might be dread.

No.

He had been mad before, in his past life; Voldemort had been mad.

No.

What this is now—

No.

It isn't that.

He glances at her—small breasts, perfect rosebud nipples, a slight, willowy frame that he could break, could crush, _easily_, so fucking easily—and his gaze lingers on the Mark on her chest.

His Mark.

His name.

She is _his._

He positions his cock, fitting the fat, spongy head of it into the welcoming warmth of her cunt.

He feels her fingertips dance across the spot above his heart where her Mark should be; he feels her stretch her neck out, brush her lips against his skin.

He pauses.

He noses at her Mark, and immediately senses magic—his magic, her magic, their bond, yes, fuck, _yes_, and he licks at the letters, traces his tongue over the scabs, recognizes the practiced, pristine lines of his own handwriting—

She bites into his chest, drawing blood, and he knows, instinctively, that it will scar.

He is hers.

He slams his hips forward.

He gasps.

He is _hers_.

No—no—

This is not insanity.

This is _them._

###

**Author's Note**: So…that was weird, right?

Anyway.

For those of you who don't follow me on Tumblr, I should probably mention that I had a disastrous accident with my laptop a few weeks ago and lost, literally, close to 75k words of unsaved work, including the original draft of this chapter. So, this is a re-write. I don't think there's a noticeable difference in tone or quality, but I've also been sick with the fucking Goliath of all super-flus and my judgment might still be cloudy. I don't know. I'm feeling fragile right now—I didn't write anything at all for almost two weeks, which is unprecedented, and when I realized how much work I'd lost I kind of had a nervous breakdown. (30k worth of edits for an original novel I'm working on. I didn't cry, because I'm basically an adult, but, like. I REALLY WANTED TO, OKAY?)

On a happier note, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I'm going to get super drunk and switch all the tags on the presents under the tree. And then make my spawn take pictures in Santa hats that they will almost certainly be embarrassed about when they're adolescents. I have a solid plan in place for all of this.

xoxo

P.S. The next part of this fic will feature the inevitable repercussions of Tom and Hermione's actions in this chapter. It's a clusterfuck. Expect an update in 1-2 weeks.

###


End file.
